heartsteps

At night I open the window and ask
the moon to come and press its
face against mine.

Breathe into me. Close
the language-door and open the love-window.
The moon won’t use the door,
only the window

Rumi

This being human is a guest house, every morning a new arrival…a joy, a depression, a meanness,
Some momentary awareness comes as an unexpected visitor. Welcome and entertain them all.
Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows who violently sweep the house empty of its furniture.
Still, treat each guest honourably. He may be clearing you out for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice, meet them at the door laughing and invite them in.
Be grateful for whomever comes because each has been sent as a guide from beyond.

Rumi

Listen, and feel the beauty of your separation,
the unsayable absence.

There is a moon inside every human being.
Learn to be companions with it.

Give more of your life to this listening.

As brightness is to time,
so you are to the one who talks
to the deep ear in your chest.

I should sell my tongue and buy a thousand ears
when that one steps near and begins to speak.

Rumi

Pain is a treasure, for it contains mercies.
The kernel is soft when the rind is scraped off.
Oh brother, the place of darkness and cold
is the fountain of life in the cup of ecstasy.
So also is endurance of pain and sickness and disease.
For from abasement proceeds exultation.
The spring seasons are hidden in the autumns.
And the autumns are charged with springs.

Rumi

Learn the alchemy true human beings know.
The moment you accept what troubles
you’ve been given, the door will open.

Welcome difficulty, as a familiar comrade.
Joke with torment brought by the Friend.

Sorrows are the rags of old clothes
and jackets that serve to cover,
and then are taken off.

That undressing,
and the naked body underneath,
is the sweetness that comes after grief.

Rumi

On a day
when the wind is perfect,
the sail just needs to open and the world is full of beauty.
Today is such a
day.
My eyes are like the sun that makes promises;
the promise of life
that it always
keeps
each morning.
The living heart gives to us as does that luminous sphere,
both caress the earth with great
tenderness.
This is a breeze that can enter the soul.
This love I know plays a drum. Arms move around me;
who can contain their self before my beauty?
Peace is wonderful,
but ecstatic dance is more fun, and less narcissistic;
gregarious He makes our lips.
On a day when the wind is perfect,
the sail just needs to open
and the love starts.
Today is such
a day.

Rumi

On a day when the wind is perfect,
the sail just needs to open and the world is full of beauty.
Today is such a day.
My eyes are like the sun that makes promises;
the promise of life that it always
keeps each morning.
The living heart gives to us as does that luminous sphere,
both caress the earth with great tenderness.
This is a breeze that can enter the soul.
This love I know plays a drum. Arms move around me;
who can contain their self before my beauty?
Peace is wonderful,
but ecstatic dance is more fun, and less narcissistic;
gregarious He makes our lips.
On a day when the wind is perfect,
the sail just needs to open
and the love starts.
Today is such a day.

Don’t unstring your bow.
I am your four-feathered arrow
that is not been used yet.

I am a strong knife blade word,
not some if or maybe, dissolving in air.
I am sunlight slicing the dark.

Who made this night?
A forge deep in the earth-mud.

What is the body?
Endurance.

What is love?
Gratitude.

What is hidden in our chests?
Laughter.

What else?
Compassion.

Don’t ask what love can make or do.
Look at the colors of the world.
The riverwater moving in all rivers once.

Rumi

That hurt we embrace becomes joy.
Call it to your arms where it can change.
A silkworm eating leaves makes a cocoon. Each of us weaves a chamber
of leaves and sticks.
Like silkworms, we begin to exist
as we disappear
inside that room.

Without legs, we fly.
When I stop speaking, this poem
will close in silence more magnificent…

I don’t regret how much I love,
and I avoid those who repent their passion.

Hundreds of sweethearts!
I am the lover and the one
lovers long for. Blue, and a cure
for blues, sky in a small cage,

badly hurt but flying.
Everybody’s scandalous flaw is mine.

Rumi

Last night my soul asked a question of existence.
Why are you upsidedown with flames in your belly?
Happy, unhappy, indigo-orange like the sky?

Why are you an off-balance wobbling millstone,
like the Buddhist Sufi, Ibrahim Balkhi,
who was king, beggar, buddha and dervish?

Existence answers, All this was made
by the one who hides inside you.

You are like a beautiful new bride,
quick to anger, stubborn,
hot, naked, but still veiled.

Rumi